PHOENIX LECTURES: Chapter 25

This paper presents Chapter 25 from the book THE PHOENIX LECTURES by L. RON HUBBARD. The contents are from the original publication of this book by The Church of Scientology (1954).

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the understanding from Buddhism. Feedback on these comments is always appreciated.

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SCIENTOLOGY AND LIVING

The application of Scientology to one’s everyday life is a vast subject, and the best method of doing this is simply using the A-R-C triangle, with its consequent Chart of Human Evaluation, in everyday living. This takes into account most of the manifestations one sees, and which one can evaluate quickly.

Hubbard’s idea of living is to continually observe and evaluate the various manifestations of life.

This, of course, includes the Communication Formula, and an understanding of that Communication Formula would be an understanding of Cause, Distance, Effect, and the fact that people who are at the Cause point or Source point are very often very reluctant to be Cause, and people who are at the Effect point are very often very reluctant to be an Effect, in both cases of anything.

Most people are reluctant to be cause or effect.

So, they will do various things in communication, such as to move out onto the distance between Cause point and Effect point, and so become a message. People get stuck very easily with this. You can carry all the wisdom you want, anywhere, to anybody, without yourself being a message. Have the message in your hand, put the message on the line, but don’t yourself be the message. People as they go between these two points get closer and closer to arrival, and there is the fellow who doesn’t dare arrive — he doesn’t dare get to that Effect point — and there’s the fellow who doesn’t dare leave, or go any further from that Cause point, and he’ll get further and further then from being Cause and he will be more and more an Effect. And you could get these two points pulled together more and more tightly until, although they were not quite the same point, nevertheless you get this series of manifestations.

They would rather be the message (spectators?).

An understanding of the Communication Formula is very useful in everyday life, very useful in understanding life. You’ll see somebody who — everything he’s the cause of he becomes the effect of. This goes back a long way down the track. “The Second Law of Magic”, it could have been said to be, which is: Don’t be the effect of your own cause. Well, of course it’s impossible not to be the effect of your own cause, so that in itself is a booby trap. A fellow’s a fool if he thinks he can cause something without becoming one way or the other the effect of it. He can cause anything he pleases as long as he is willing to be the effect of what he causes. You are a static, you are a personality, you don’t have mass, meaning or mobility as yourself (you’re using a body rather than being a body) and you naturally are capable of causing almost anything — but supposing you were standing there protecting a body, being a body, hiding in a body, and you cause something which you wouldn’t like to have happen to the body. Supposing you pick up a book and throw it at somebody and give them a big bruise in the face or something of the sort — you don’t like the effect, so you begin to resist being an effect, and you resist being an effect more and more and more. Actually you’re making one body resist being an effect, and after a while, because of the make-up of this universe, where eventually (Anything you resist you get, Anything you resist you become — the favorite motto of this universe), you become it. In the absence of processing and understanding — let’s modify that to that degree — if you understand this and if there is processing, that ceases to occur. But here we have people becoming very, very unwilling to be the cause of anything. You’ll find they won’t give anyone orders because they themselves do not want to be the effect of receiving orders. They’ll do all sorts of very remarkable things to avoid upsetting people in their vicinity. Why? Because they’re afraid themselves of being upset. They’ve learned by experience the overt act-motivator sequence (Overt act-motivator sequence: the sequence wherein someone who has committed a harmful or contra-survival act has to claim the existence of “motivators”, which are then likely to be used to justify committing further overt acts). If you want to know why people get nervous, it’s just because when they make the faintest overt act, they get this tremendously exaggerated package of facsimiles saying, No, no, no, no. “Oh, no, you’d better not talk to those people hard like that or it’ll really cave in on you.” Well, that is fairly normal in a society. It’s one thing to be polite because you can be polite, and it’s quite another thing to let yourself be walked all over, and it’s still quite another thing to be reactively in apathy.

You’ll see somebody who — everything he’s the cause of he becomes the effect of (because he is unwilling to be an effect). A fellow’s a fool if he thinks he can cause something without becoming one way or the other the effect of it. He can cause anything he pleases as long as he is willing to be the effect of what he causes.

There is another manifestation which is even more curious, which you will see once in a while, and that is: anything that happens in the vicinity at all, the person knows he is the cause of it. Now it starts with anything that happened to him he knew he basically caused it, which of course happens to be a salient truth. It is true that anything that happened to him he was basically the cause of, but that’s way up scale on the chart, and now he just feels this reactively — that he has become an effect, therefore he caused it. Just automatically. You’ve got Cause and Effect here so close together that they short circuit. If there is an effect, he caused it, and that spreads out to the broad environment, until you will find an insane person, worrying like mad — for having caused all of World War II. He must have done something, because there was World War II. It must have been him. He’s playing the Only One very hard at this point. Even children will react on this one occasionally. On the death of an ally (Ally: a person who sympathized with or appeared to aid the survival of an individual when he was ill, injured or unconscious and whom the individual now reactively regards as necessary to his continued existence and well-being) we see a child walking around worrying, and wondering what on earth he did that killed his grandmother or his sister or whoever. He must have done something. He was the effect of it, wasn’t he? He must have done something.

There is another manifestation which is even more curious, which you will see once in a while, and that is: anything that happens in the vicinity at all, the person knows he is the cause of it. You’ve got Cause and Effect here so close together that they short circuit.

And we get that as the entering wedge into superstition. “Let’s see, I’m a victim, therefore I must be guilty of something” — and they dream up something on the order of “original sin”. It’s all bad, therefore you must be the effect of it, and that becomes “repent, repent”. Well, actually, an individual only needs to accept the responsibility for his own acts, this will take care of things very nicely, and if he recognizes clearly the effects which he does cause, and if he’s perfectly willing to cause effects which he dares be the effect of himself, he can walk through this bramble and brush with great ease even as a body. There is a code of conduct which is available.

An individual only needs to accept the responsibility for his own acts and be perfectly willing to cause effects which he dares be the effect of himself.

Well, I want to call your attention to the Chart of Human Evaluation, which was organized very early in 1951, which has various columns, and which gives behavior characteristics. It is plotted out mathematically on the basis of ARC. When you raise the affinity of a person you will raise his reality and raise his communication. When you raise his communication, you will raise his affinity and raise his reality. When you raise his reality of something you will raise his affinity and raise his communication. That is a very good chart to use in order to predict people. It is particularly important for an auditor to use this chart, but it is a chart that can be used in everyday living.

An auditor at one time had studied this chart as just theory on a course. He found it quite interesting. And having studied all this, why, it never occurred to him that it was true or real or anything like that. He was perfectly in agreement with it as a mathematical study.

Then one day the thought struck him, that this might be applicable to life at large. What if this chart were true! Of course, people really wouldn’t act like that. But he went into a bank and looked around, just watching people go by in the bank lobby, and watching the people behind the desks, and he talked to a couple of people and so on, and he started placing them on the Tone Scale. Well, he did this all one morning, and he came back to class pretty horrified. This Chart was absolutely accurate! It applied to every one of those people out there right across the columns. But what horrified him wasn’t the Chart but the fact that people consistently obeyed these levels all the time, didn’t know they were doing it or what they were doing and had no slightest inkling of what was going on. One fellow was “1.5-ing” (1.5: numerical equivalent on the Chart of Human Evaluation for the person who is in Overt Hostility. Anger is his standard state. He is capable of taking destructive action and is characteristically trying to stop things). He was acting exactly as a 1.5 should act, reacting across the boards. This auditor went so far, toward the end of morning, as to ask the fellow who was 1.5-ing just casually how his arthritis was, and the fellow said, “Oh! It’s terrible!” Arthritis would be a way of stopping something, wouldn’t it? An auditor spots these things just in everyday fashion as casually as he’d pick up a blotter.

But this auditor had all of a sudden walked into a completely predictable world. That is good, but you want to beware of this trap: Let’s just avoid “the reason why”. The reason why

they’re doing what they are doing is ARC, and the reasons they give are the reasons which justify them against the social pattern in which they live. That is the totality of “the reason why.” For instance, the cop acts the way he acts because he is a cop. The bank president has to act the way he acts because he is a bank president. His first excuse is his beingness or position and his next few excuses down the line might have been causative things in his life — it’s true that a person put in a position that requires for instance, a 2.0 (antagonism) is likely to at least dramatize being a 2.0 right across the Chart, but this is the curious thing: that he doesn’t have to believe it, too. You see, he could be a 2.0 straight across the Tone Scale but he doesn’t have to believe it. It’s only when he becomes all this seriously that he gets onto this scale. Remember that it’s ARC, then, not reasons why. If you fall into reasons why, you can just figure-figure with the rest of them forever.

The reason why the people act the way do is ARC. It is where they are on the Tone Scale. There is no other reason.

Just look at this ratio: how much space does the person have on that Communication Formula? How much space has he got? What’s his general affinity toward life at large? What’s his reality? What is he basically in agreement with? And we look at that, and actually we see these three corners of the triangle forming a plane, and as his space gets greater he goes right on up the scale and right on out the top of the scale, and as his space gets less, why the Source Point and Receipt Point of the Communication Formula come almost together, but it’s like walking half way to Chicago. Every time you walked halfway to Chicago you of course never got to Chicago. The Source Point and Receipt Point do not ever coincide. They will and can coincide perfectly at the top of the scale, at which moment you’ve achieved a condition which might be rather poetically stated as a brotherhood with the entire universe, but that’s a total affinity, and it is not an enforced or impelled affinity. Affinity, which is compelled and enforced does not persist, it simply goes down scale. A free affinity for all of life is quite a different thing.

Affinity, which is compelled and enforced does not persist, it simply goes down scale. A free affinity for all of life is quite a different thing.

Now every once in a while, an individual may start worrying about his sympathy for life. He realizes that he has some inkling of what ants think about and do. And he knows that a cactus has a certain emotion about it too, and he’s likely to start worrying about this and try to pull back. He’s afraid he will become these things fixedly, if he goes into sympathy with them all.

But his passport to freedom is his sympathy for all life and its forms. Not compulsive, just his free sympathy. If he were being forced to feel sympathetic towards young boys, we would be certain he would eventually, if he were a thetan, become a young boy.

We recognize in this chart that we have a successful method of prediction, and in ARC in general we have a good scale of prediction, and an individual cognizant of these things can predict the activity of those about him.

We recognize in this chart that we have a successful method of prediction.

In view of the fact that these three items, A, R and C, combined together, are symptomatic of understanding, the degree of understanding which a person has of existence is the degree that he has distance possible in his Communication Formula, therefore we find understanding of existence increasing and increasing and increasing as he goes upscale and decreasing, decreasing, decreasing as he goes downscale. Of course we could add every factor of Scientology into this, but let’s add beingness into this, and we find out that an individual is at first, on middle scale, completely free to be anything, and then as he goes downscale, he’s more and more compulsively being made to be something and he finds himself something, and this makes him unhappy because he feels that it is not by his own choice. We actually know by As-is-ness and the necessity of altering As-is-ness that he had to appoint an other-determinism to keep something, and this makes him unhappy because he feels that it is not by his own choice. We actually know by As-is-ness and the necessity of altering As-is-ness that he had to appoint another determinism to keep something to go on persisting, and he’s more and more avoiding motionlessness, because motionlessness is dangerous to him. Therefore a consistent, continual beingness as something is something he begins to fear, and when an individual is to a point where he has the horrible feeling that if he stood still for a long time in one place, he’d sort of grow roots, or he’d do something peculiar like this, something bad would happen to him. Or if pain turns on because he has to stand still for a while, you would have a condition there where you have compulsive beingness jibing with this one, which is the same thing — fear of motionlessness — and that fear of motionlessness is making him more and more motionlessness. The more frantically this individual goes into motion, the more he becomes a symbol. And, of course, the more he becomes a symbol, the more mass he accumulates, and the more meaning he accumulates. And when you get him down around about .5 (apathy) on that tone scale his “reasons why” — would be utterly nonsequitur, but boy would they be significant! Mass, meaning and mobility, then, fits in there. Beingness fits in there. To understand life and human beings at large one should recognize this — that every human being there is, is a thetan being a human being.

Enlarged, this becomes the Know-to-Mystery scale. Lower on the Scale a person is not being himself. He is forced to assume a beingness. He begins to fear a consistent, continual beingness. The more frantically he goes into motion, the more he becomes a symbol.

An individual would never have become selectively and enforcibly a human being if he had no overt acts against human bodies. He has enormous numbers of overt acts against human bodies — and as a result he is very, very pressed on the subject of protecting bodies. He mustn’t let a body be an effect of anything. He now must protect the body from such things as himself. As he goes down tone scale, whereas he may worship some powerful spirit that throws lightening bolts at him, as far as individual thetans are concerned, to let anyone be three feet back of his head or something like that, is intolerable to him and means that a body is likely to be attacked. You see? “Thetans attack bodies.” He knows. They’re bad. On the subject of exteriorization this person will pull a trick like this: “Be three feet back of your head.” “Are you three feet back of your head?” “Well, you’re sure you are, now?” et cetera. And he’ll say right at that moment: “Well, put your attention on your nose. Make your nose move down a little bit”… and the person is sitting there saying “Whaaat?” A sudden change of pace. And it’ll just hang the preclear in that particular moment in time. We get that kind of a manifestation.

The body and the self (soul) are mistakenly taken as separate viewpoints (beingnesses). The true beingness is the person who is neither fixated on the body nor on the self (soul).

Then there is the subject of something-or-nothing-ness. A thetan is perfectly at liberty to have all the somethingnesses he wants to and any of the nothingnesses he wants to. He can communicate with somethingnesses with great ease. A thetan is something which is above something-and-nothing. A thetan isn’t just nothing, you see. He is something which can monitor somethingnesses and nothingnesses. Well, if this is the case then we find that people would be doing one of two things when they get extremely down scale. They would either be trying to concentrate on all somethings, or they would start concentrating on all nothings. As a matter of fact as they go down scale they do this alternately. They fall out of all something, something, something, and they go into a strata where it must be nothing, nothing, nothing, must be something, something, something, and then MUST be nothing, and then MUST be something, and going on down through these strata you’ll find human beings around who are utterly compelled to make nothing out of bodies, to make nothing out of cars, manuscripts, any remark which you make, any action. They’ve got to make nothing out of it. It would just kill them if they couldn’t ridicule it. Ridicule is the very lightest method of slapping you to pieces. You’ll come up with a favorite joke of yours and it’s always been funny to other people around, and all of a sudden, this person takes it apart with a snide remark. And you have just won the track meet and boy you’re sure happy. You’ve got a ribbon about a yard long and you’re proud of it, and everything’s fine. This person says to you, “Do you know your shoes are muddy, and you have some dirt on your face, too.” NOTHING. Make nothing there if we possibly can. Well, this is the biggest allowable nothing they can make, and they’re being prevented from making nothing of things. They don’t know any mechanisms to use to unmock things. Really, it’s by effort — energy. They’ve got to make nothing out of things with energy. The harder they try that the further down they go. Now, when they’ve got to make something, because they have to have something, they’ll get into the same kind of situation. A thetan who is in very good shape could mockup a solid steel pyramid, and if he was in wonderful shape, you could probably see it too. But downscale, he just compulsively has to mockup something, then all of his automaticity is gone into making something and he’s objecting to it. He’s objecting to every part of it as he goes down. To understand people, then, we would have to understand what kind of cycle this person is on. Is he on a somethingness cycle or a nothingness cycle? Neither one is any worse than the other, but the truth of the matter is that sane people — and we categorize that just overtly as above 2.0 on the tone scale — sane people make somethings and nothings at will. They don’t have to. They do it to get some action, life, and so forth. And they can change their minds. They’re not compulsively making somethings and compulsively making nothings, continually. Their conduct has a little randomity and difference to it.

Body is something, and self (soul) a nothing. As a person goes downscale, he alternates between these two beingnesses (viewpoints).

There is not really such a condition as “insanity”. There really is no such condition as neurosis. These are simply two arbitrary words that were thrown into the society and they were never defined, and the society so variously understands them, that kids just as sane as anybody stand there calling each other crazy. It’s just a slang. There is an emotion, however, called the “Glee of Insanity” (“Glee of Insanity”: Also called the “glee of irresponsibility”. Manifestation which takes the form of an actual wave emanation resulting basically from an individual dramatizing the condition of “Must Reach — Can’t Reach, Must Withdraw — Can’t Withdraw”), which is an intolerable thing for a person.

We could say a person is in such a state in relationship to energy that he could not take care of himself, couldn’t feed himself properly or take care of his body, we could call that person insane. But again, this is just an arbitrary thing. It really has no definition in this society.

“Must Reach—Can’t Reach, Must Withdraw—Can’t Withdraw” is condition that comes closest to defining insanity, where a person cannot take care of himself.

But to understand and predict people at large it is only necessary for you to know whether they make something or nothing out of things, and then remember if you please that their conduct is consistent. They might have a lot of reasons why. They might be doing something unpredictable. But they have a motive which underlies their conduct just to this degree: something, or nothing. They are doing one or the other.

To understand and predict people at large it is only necessary for you to know whether they make something or nothing out of things.

Now there are two other categories of human beings, and one is the category up scale where things can be bad, good at will. The categories from Know to Sex on the upper scale can be good, but when they’re low on the scale, everything from Know to Sex — and low scale this is all Mystery — is BAD. And when you get someone where everything on the Know to Mystery Scale is bad, you have a case which is very inverted. It’s well below 2. It’s all bad. That’s why “we’ve got to make nothing.” This is your 1.5. He is actually operating there one hundred percent. He can only operate on emergencies. “We are about to have this tremendous disaster and therefore we are going to have to have this emergency legislation,” and therefore, “We can make this huge army,” so as to make nothing.

When you get someone where everything on the Know to Mystery Scale is bad, you have a case which is very inverted.

They have lost the concept of doing something because it’s fun, and there’s your last keynote. Individuals who can do things, no matter whether good, bad or indifferent or outrageous, simply because they’re fun. An individual who can freely and with a clear heart do things because they’re fun is a very sane person. He’s in good shape.

An individual who can freely and with a clear heart do things because they’re fun is a very sane person.

You can notice the amount of laughter which a person laughs. Laughter has a number of harmonics down the line, but we’re not talking about the harmonics. This is rather upper scale laughter. He doesn’t laugh because he’s embarrassed. He laughs because he thinks something is funny, and if a person laughs fairly often and is very easy in that laughter you’ve got a sane man. Down scale they laugh less and less and less, or laugh more embarrassedly, or compulsively or obsessively, more and more and more, as we get way down to the bottom, and the person there just doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t live, either. He just lies there — mass, meaning and no mobility. He’s not even a symbol anymore.

If a person laughs fairly often and is very easy in that laughter you’ve got a sane man.

There in essence if you care to study it, is the Chart of Human Evaluation, and if you care to apply this information to life as a whole, you’ll find out that you can know human beings.

But remember you shouldn’t expect them to know you. If their distance in that communication formula is very close together, they won’t understand you, but that doesn’t prevent you from understanding them.

Simply make an effort to understand others even when they don’t understand you.

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FINAL COMMENTS

One lives by continually and effortlessly observing things as they are, so he goes through life making correct assessments. The A-R-C triangle of Scientology, with its consequent Chart of Human Evaluation, is of great help in predicting human behavior.

A person is truly being there when he is neither fixated on body nor on self. To understand and predict people at large it is only necessary to know whether they make something or nothing out of things. An individual who can freely and with a clear heart do things because they are fun is a very sane person.